About Ghana

You must obtain a travel visa to Ghana from the nearest Ghana Embassy. Once you have secured your place in the project and made deposit. We will send you a letter confirming your placement for your visa application.

Flights

Volunteers must arrange their own flights to Accra Airport (ACC). Please be aware that you should communicate your arrival date and time to Volunteer Coordinator. The following airlines fly into Accra:

All Green Ghana Volunteers arriving at Ghana’s Airport (Kotoka International Airport) shall be welcome by GGV-VPWA Coordinators who shall drive you to your new home to begin your new experience.

About Ghana

Ghana is a
fascinating culture at a cross roads between the past and the present. It is
historically rich and amazingly diverse. It boasts the legacy of the great
Ashanti Empire of the 11th century along with the dubious distinction of being
the most travelled route for the transport of Africans to the new world. The
history of Ghana
reminds us just how dynamic events are, with it not mattering how events -good
or bad- begin but the culture that emerges from the coming together of peoples.

Location
& Country Facts

The Republic
of Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast)
lies on the Gulf of Guinea, on the western coast of tropical Africa, bisected by the Greenwich Meridian. The country
lies within GMT zone. Ghana
extends from 672km north to south between latitudes 4.5† North and 11† North
and from 536km East to West between longitudes 3† West and 1o East. It is
bordered to the West by Cote d'Ivoire,
to the North by Burkina Faso,
to the East by Togo and to
the South by the Atlantic Ocean. Ghana has a total land area of 239, 460km2,
equivalent to that of Great Britain
or the state of Oregon in the USA. The
population of Ghana
is approximately 22 million. The majority of the population is concentrated in
the southern and central part of the country, with Greater Accra the most
densely populated region. The northern three regions, despite covering more
than 40% of the national surface, support only 25% of Ghana's
population.

Capital & Administrative Regions

The capital of Ghana is Accra, situated
on the Atlantic coast about 25km West of the Greenwich meridian. The current population of
Accra is just
under 2 million people. The second largest city in the country is Kumasi, the former
capital of the Ashanti Empire. Ghana
is divided into ten administrative regions: Upper West, Upper East, Northern,
Brong-Ahafo, Volta, Ashanti, Western, Central, Eastern
and Greater Accra.

Climate

Ghana has a
typically tropical climate. Daytime temperatures are high, approaching or
topping 30oC on most days but fall at night. Temperatures are

reasonably consistent throughout the year. The main seasonal factor is rain, which falls
almost exclusively between April-September, peaking in May and June. Another
phenomenon in Ghana
is the arrival of the Harmattan winds that blow from the northeast during the
dry season. They bring dust from the Sahara
and reduce visibility to as little as 1km. They generally come in late November
or early December and continue until March.

Famous Ghanaians

Kofi Annan, UN
Secretary General 1997-2007

Michael Essien ,
Chelsea Football Club

Marcel Desailly,
Ghana-born French footballer

Paul Boateng,
British politician

Kwame Nkrumah,
founder of Pan-Africanism

Hugh Quarshie, British
Actor

Ama Ata Aidoo,
writer

National Flag

The national flag consists of three
horizontal stripes -red, yellow and green from top to bottom-with a black star
in the middle of the yellow stripe. The red band

represents the blood of the
nation's freedom fighters, the yellow its mineral wealth and the green its
forest.

Language

English is the official national language but there are a total of
at least 75 African languages and dialects spoken in Ghana, generally divided into the
Akan, Mole-Dagbani, Ewe and Ga language groups. Twi is the main Akan tongue and
spoken by roughly half the population, including the Ashanti and Fante.

Religion

Freedom
of religion is a
constitutional right in Ghana.
It is thought that about 60% of Ghanaians are Christian and at least 25%
Muslim. Minority religions include various traditional faiths, Bahai,
Hinduism
and Buddhism. Islam is the predominant faith in the north, having
reached West Africa via the trans-Saharan trade routes as early
as the eighth century AD. Christianity dominates in the southern and
central
parts of the country, with Catholicism first introduced by the
Portuguese in
the late 15th century.

History – Origin

The area in which modern day Ghana lies was
inhabited by humans at least as long as 300,000 years ago, though current
understanding of human movements would suggest that the area had been occupied
for millions of years before. The earliest peoples were hunter-gatherers, with
agriculture and pastoralism adopted widely by around 5000 BC. According to oral
traditions most modern Ghanaian population groups migrated to their present
homelands from elsewhere in West Africa, moving into a territory occupied by
the Guan who are regarded as the true aboriginals of modern Ghana. The
modern republic of Ghana takes its name from the Ancient state of Ghana, which actually lay to the north of modern
Ghana.
Ancient Ghana was founded
between AD 300 -AD 700 by Mande speakers and was a powerful centralized trading
empire that effectively acted as the ‘’middleman’ between areas south of the
Sahel and north of the Sahara. Ancient Ghana
eventually fissured and collapsed in around the thirteenth century, and was
taken over by the Ancient Mali Empire founded by the Mandinka people. The area
retained its role within the north-south trade routes and by the medieval era,
the rainforest belt of modern Ghana
was established as one of the West Africa
region’s richest sources of gold.

People of Ghana

The
people of modern Ghana are
generally divided into four main regional groupings, each of which
shares a
similar language and culture. The Mole-Dagbani of the Northern Region
were the
first to establish their approximate modern territory, migrating from
the Lake Chad region in the thirteenth century to establish
the Mamprusi kingdom at Gambaga. The area to the east of lake
Volta is inhabited by the Ewe,
fifteenth century migrants from eastern Nigeria. Ewe society is the
least
centralized of any in modern Ghana
and each of the roughly 130 small Ewe chieftaincies is entirely
autonomous. The
other important grouping of the east is the Ga-Adangbe, made up of the
Ga
people of the Accra
coastal plain and the Adangbe of Ada and Somanya. Like the Ewe, the
Ga-Adangbe
are originally from eastern Nigeria.
The most significant population group in modern Ghana, territorially and
numerically is the Akan. The Akans of the southern and central part of the
country embrace several dozen culturally similar and historically allied
peoples, the best known of which are the Ashanti
of the Kumasi
area and the Fante of the central coast. The Akan comprise more than half of
modern Ghana’s population
and inhabit five of its ten administrative regions: Western, Central, Eastern, Ashanti
and Brong-Ahafo. Although every Akan village has its own chief, political
centralization into larger kingdoms has been a recurrent feature of Akan
history, from the fourteenth century Bono kingdom
of Techiman to recent entities such as
Ashanti
and Fante. The Akan are thought to have migrated to modern Ghana from the Sahel.

European Arrival and the Gold Trade

In 1471 the Portuguese arrived at
the village, which was subsequently named Elmina, after the Portuguese de Costa
da el Mina Ouro (the Coast of the Gold Mines). Elmina was the centre of the
Portuguese gold trade for their 150 year tenure on the Gold Coast, with
throughout the sixteenth century, $150, 000 worth of gold exported annually
from the region. The Dutch were the first to seriously challenge Portugal’s
monopoly on the Gold Coast, launching an attack on Elmina in 1596 and from that
time on trading with the region. In 1612 they established their first fort on
the Gold Coast and in 1637 they finally captured Elmina. Dutch control of the
region was short-lived. In 1665 the British navy captured Cape Coast, able to
seize control through the greater economic power they had built up in the
region through their involvement in a trade more lucrative than gold.

Slave Trade

The transatlantic slave trade is a
singular event in human history, operating on an unprecedented scale and with
shattering and wide ranging effects. It is estimated that between 12 and 20
million Africans were transported across the Atlantic between the late
seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, with conditions so bad on the ships
during the five-week crossing that it was not unusual for over half of the
human cargo to perish. The slave trade had a devastating effect on African
society. It destroyed traditional industries such as iron and gold smelting,
established an arms race between neighbouring groups and above all removed
several generations of able-bodied men and women. The trade was eventually
abolished by Britain in
1833, France in 1848, USA in 1865 and Brazil in 1888.

Ghana –
Nineteenth Century to Colonialism

The European powers maintained a
commercial relationship with the chieftaincies of the Gold Coast until the late
nineteenth century. In 1874 following a period of confrontations between the
British, Dutch, Fante empire and Ashanti,
in an attempt to settle the region, Britain declared the Gold Coast, a
Crown colony. The Gold Coast colony was initially a fraction of the size of
modern Ghana, and was
extended by the British in the 1890’s during the European ‘Scramble for Africa’. In 1896 the British decided to expand the
territory further and incorporate the Ashanti
kingdom by seizing the capital of the empire, Kumasi. There followed the only major war
against the British in Ghana,
led by the Ashanti
Princess, Nana Yaa Asantewa. The resistance was eventually quashed after 6
years of war, and the take over of Kumasi
completed formally in 1902, joining the Ashanti Empire along with the
territories that make up modern Ghana’s
three northern regions into the Gold Coast colony.

The colony was run along the system
of indirect rule, a system, which would effectively undermine traditional
chieftaincies, and systems of election by the council of elders. The first
resistance to colonial rule had emerged in 1897 and appeared in a more cohesive
form in 1915 with the formation of the National Congress of British West Africa
(NCBWA). World War Two proved to be decisive in the battle for independence. In
total, 65, 000 African volunteers went from the Gold coast colony to fight in
the European war, fighting for democratic ideals that they expected to benefit
from on their return. Instead when they returned they faced unemployment and no
change in their legal or democratic rights.

In 1947 the United Gold Coast
Convention (UGCC) formed by Dr. Danquah made a demand to Britain for self-government in Gold Coast, and
later that year, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the nationalist and pan-Africanist returned
from the US
to join the UGCC. The leadership of the UGCC were imprisoned until 1949 by the
colonial administration in an attempt to control the UGCC and calm the rising
instability. However, on his release Dr. Nkrumah formed the more radical
Convention People’s Party (CPP) who organized strikes and ballots in an attempt
to make the colony ungovernable. In 1951 the colonial administration relented
to public demands, allowing 36 seats in government to be elected and in March
1952 Nkrumah became the Gold Coast’s first African prime minister. Nkrumah
continued to lobby for the Gold Coast’s full independence, which was finally
achieved on 6th March 1957 when Ghana
became the first African colony to be granted independence.

Ghana – 1957 to
Present

The Nkrumah era was characterized by
President Nkrumah’s vision of Ghana
as the pioneering state in Africa and a dream
of African unity. Under the Nkrumah government vast improvements were made to
the country’s transport network, the Akosombo dam was constructed along with a
deep-water harbour at Tema and the education system was expanded to become one
of the best in Africa. Nkrumah was eventually
deposed in 1966 by the military in response to his government’s harsh criticism
and treatment of political detainees. From 1966-1969 Ghana was ruled by the military
National Liberation Council under the leadership of Lieutenant General Ankra
and Brigadier Afrifa, a regime that did much to restore democracy, free speech
and a free press. In 1969 elections were held and won by Dr. Busia leader of
the Progress Party (PP). However, Dr. Busia was removed by a coup that followed
a period of economic instability and massive inflation. There followed a
six-year presidency of General Acheampong, which was ended by a coup led by
Flight Lieutenant Rawlings, who pledged to end the corruption and political
repression that had developed.

Having established a civilian government,
Rawlings seized back power in 1981 when the government demonstrated as much
corruption as that before it. Rawlings was able initially to stabilize
government at a local and national level, and in his early years of rule
enabled unprecedented levels of economic growth. However by 1990 the situation
had deteriorated and become highly unstable as groups campaigned for free and
fair multi party elections and an end to repression of political criticism. In
1992 elections were held and won by Rawlings with a clear majority and the
following years saw many positive developments on the economic front as well as
an increased level of political freedom. In 2000 a momentous election took
place, when power was transferred for the first time peacefully in Ghana, from
Rawlings to John Kufuor, leader of the former opposition party, the NPP. There
was widespread support for President Kufuor who was seen as leading Ghana through
the transition from a period of consolidating democracy, to a time where
democracy is an inherent part of the political process. John Agyekum Kufuor,
known as the Gentle Giant, served a second term, this ended in 2008.

A presidential election was held in Ghana on 7 th
December, 2008, at the same time as a parliamentary election. However, as no
candidate received more than 50% of the votes; a run-off was held on 28th
December, 2008 between the two candidates who got the most votes, Nana
Akufo-Addo and John Atta-Mills. John Atta-Mills emerged as the victor in the
run-off elections on 3 rd January, 2009, by less than 1% margin. He was sworn
in on 7th January, 2009 as Ghana’s
third democratically elected President The political transition has proceeded
peacefully and is seen as a major achievement for the region. Ghana is a shining example of Democracy in Africa.

Money

The cedi is the
unit of currency of Ghana.
One cedi is divided into one hundred pesewas. The present cedi was introduced
on July 3, 2007, and was equal to 10,000

old cedi when redenomination saw four
zeros lopped off the value.

Ghana is not
generally an expensive country in which to stay, but volunteers should be aware
that certain amenities that foreigners are accustomed too, such as water and
imported commodities, are expensive in Ghana. We strongly recommend that
volunteers bring hard currency cash, rather than travelers checks or credit
cards because this is the most easy to exchange. The best exchange rate is for
larger bills. Credit cards are not widely accepted and obtaining a cash advance
is a lengthy process. If you do bring a credit card, we recommend bringing VISA.